Group Sues Top Calif. Prison Official To Release Info On Solitary Confinement

The Adelanto Detention Facility on November 15, 2013 in Adelanto, California. Guards said he had been put in solitary confinement for fighting with another inmate. The facility, the largest and newest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), detention center in California, houses an average of 1,100 immigrants in custody pending a decision in their immigration cases or awaiting deportation. The facility is managed by the private GEO Group. ICE detains an average of 33,000 undocumented immigrants in more than 400 facilities nationwide.

(Photo credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Solitary confinement opponents have filed a lawsuit hoping to get state officials to release thousands of documents about the use of “isolated segregation” in California prisons.

The lawsuit against Jeffrey Beard, Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), takes aim at the use of what are officially known as Security Housing Units (SHU), “a policy which subjects thousands, probably 11,000 prisoners a year to cruel, degrading treatment,” according to attorney Peter Shea.

The lawsuit claims that CDCR is violating the California Public Records Act and calls for the release of thousands of documents with information about prisoners in isolated segregation and policies and procedures dealing with those inmates.

Starting last July, more than 30,000 inmates in California prisons refused meals in a hunger strike aimed at calling attention to the use of solitary confinement. As a result of the strike, 100 prisoners were released from solitary confinement and 500 more moved closer to being transferred out of SHU, according to CFASC.

Lawmakers in Sacramento also began a series of hearings in February on problems related to the practice of solitary confinement in response to the hunger strike.

Gloria Ferrias, who says her brother Marco has been in solitary confinement for four years, said supporters of prison reform need to continue pressing for answers from the state.

“It hurts, but you have to stay positive or else the system is gonna bring us down and break us,” Ferrias said. “Like their breaking them inside, they’re breaking us outside.”

CDCR spokesperson Terri Thornton would not comment on the lawsuit until the agency received it, but she did deny the practice of “isolated segregation” in state facilities.

“The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not have any housing unit that it considers ‘solitary confinement’,” said Thornton.

CDCR officials are in the process of reviewing cases of inmates who received indeterminate placements, according to Peschiutta.